I was driving fine on the highway at 60m/hour and all of a sudden I get loss of power and rough engine...I thought it was bad gas so I put it on second gear (auto) and accelerated...however, it did not fix the problem. I pulled over and found that 1 spark plug wire came off the spark plug??!!!

 

How in heaven's name did this happen?? I didn't even touch the engine in the last 5 years.

Probably because you didn't touch the engine for 5 years.

 

A little preventative maintenance goes a long ways.

I was driving fine on the highway at 60m/hour and all of a sudden I get loss of power and rough engine...I thought it was bad gas so I put it on second gear (auto) and accelerated...however, it did not fix the problem. I pulled over and found that 1 spark plug wire came off the spark plug??!!!

 

How in heaven's name did this happen?? I didn't even touch the engine in the last 5 years.

it wasn't snugged down on the plug.....I had one blow off once years ago.

all of a sudden I get loss of power and rough engine

I always change my own plugs, distributor cap, etc. and one day I noticed the engine of my GMC Sonoma was running badly. Checked the plug wires and sure enough one of them wasn't on the distributor cap tight. That fixed it right up. Thing is, it didn't happen anytime near when I had been doing anything to it. If I didn't live alone, and this weren't an inside remote hood latch, I'd suspect someone was fooling around. Must've just not been completely clicked into place and eventually worked loose.

 

Reminds me... I also had a loose sparkplug once, too (the Sonoma again). One of those in a difficult to reach spot and not quite torqued down good enough.

 

Now, I'm a new Subaru owner and I've seen that the plugs and wires and all are somewhat different from past vehicles I've had. Looks like the boots over the plugs could be better than any others but probably still able to be dislodged. Won't know until I go about working on it.